Gadgetory

panasonic's lovely lx100 enthusiasts compact was a great camera to finish off 2014 with really good photo and video quality a great set of features and class-leading performance this is probably one of my favorite compact cameras ever it's large 4/3 sensor delivers great photo quality for the price and its 4k video looks significantly better than plain old HD it doesn't have the broadest tonal range I've ever seen and there's not a lot of recoverable detail and shadows and highlights but you can get sharp JPEG photos up through ISO 1600 and if you shoot RAW you can get usable ones through ISO 6400 depending upon the scene and if you're not picky the rest of the range looks ok scaled down its 4k videos also worth the price premium it doesn't have the supporting features that a lot of videographers would have liked such as a mic input but the quality is the best I've seen in this class and with the 4k photo feature you can pull decent 8 megapixel stills as long as the video doesn't have really fast action which makes is a great alternative to burst shooting it's also pretty fast with the best continuous shooting in its class and reasonably zippy autofocus and processing and with one glaring exception the feature set is quite comprehensive it's got a fast 24 to 75 millimeter zoom lens with a maximum aperture range of F 1.7 to F 2.8 there's a small but very nice electronic viewfinder and it also has in camera features such as the ability to create stop-motion animations using its fixed focus 11 frame per second or 40 frame per second burst modes and I really do like the design it's got a nice grip which is more than I can say for some competitors and it feels well-constructed their manual dials for shutter speed aperture and exposure compensation plus a programmable control ring and three programmable buttons the bundled flash fits into the hot shoe it's not perfect I really miss having a tilting or articulating LCD the camera really needs to come with a lens hood and the buttons feel a little too flat plus if you like to work on a tripod a plate will obstruct the battery and SD compartment overall though it's a great package it's not cheap but as the price drops over time it'll be a great buy for some people I'm Laurie grinning from C net and this is the panasonic lumix DMC lx100